Select a place where you can observe people for about 30 minutes. If, as you observe, it becomes clear that people move through this place too quickly or too slowly, look around for another place. Your task is to force yourself to see the concrete details of people’s actual behavior, not your interpretations of them. Watch what people actually do: suppress the instinct to evaluate people or to infer what people are doing based on assumed motives. Look at behavioral details like patterns of movement through space, hand gestures, posture, positions of legs or arms, ways of eating or drinking, eye or head movements, amount or volume of talking. “Friendly smile,” “in a hurry,” “flirting,” and “nervous” are interpretations, not action
How many different behaviors did you observe? List and describe them. How easy or difficult was it to document the behaviors and the characteristics of the people performing them? What made it easy or difficult? Think back on one person in particular whose behavior was especially intriguing to you. What did they do? Was there something that happened that prompted them to engage in that behavior? Also describe the demographic characteristics of the person. Based on what you observed, do you have any preliminary ideas about why your person of interest engaged in the behavior you saw? If so, what are they? If not, what other kinds of information do you feel you might need in order to start developing some ideas for why they engaged in the behavior? Reflect on the experience of observing people’s behavior. How did you feel as the observer? Was the experience easy or difficult, and in what ways?
